movies & games

[arilenex]

Are violent video games and movies really that bad for kids? I have a 5 year old son, and I've always been very flexible on what types of movies and video games he plays. I've always been more concerned with limiting the time to video games and movies, not so much the content. He's watched band of brothers with me, and likes it a lot.

 

[Juan J. Sánchez]

There haven't been any big studies that demonstrate a correlation between violent video games and behavioral issues. I have provided a Wikipedia page on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_in_video_games

That being said, the decision is up to you. Personally, my parents never really banned me from watching violent movies and playing violent video games, and it's not like I'm desensitized in any sort of way.

Also, even though I don't have any children of my own (I feel like I'm still pretty young to have kids), when I took my Psychiatry course in college, one of the teachers would always say that the key to raising children is to set boundaries. The real question is how high do you want your boundaries to be.

I hope this helps!

 

[Ellie]

People have been saying the same arguments ever since the introduction of the printing press, about video games, TV, radio, books, and I bet they said the same about listening to the musings of bards long beforehand.

 

[Jason]

I've been playing violent videogames and watching violent films since I was born, and I'm fine... seriously, I think the whole thing is a load of shit, people just want something to blame their actions on when something goes wrong, like a guy who killed his friend saying "I thought he would respawn like on Call of Duty" or "It was fun to do on GTA", that's just bullshit, and has nothing to do with the games you've played... I mean, you don't see someone actually going out and trying to remake the human centipede do you?

In my opinion, give your kid some freedom in what he watches/plays, if he likes it, he likes it... if not, well, yeah.